(Dis)connected communities and sustainable place-making

Why, despite a recent surge in the UK in “sustainable communities” policy discourse, do so many community-led sustainability initiatives remain fragmented, marginal and disconnected from local government strategies? How can community- and government-led sustainability initiatives be better integrated such that they add significantly to a denser matrix and cluster of sustainable places? These questions, we argue, lie at the heart of current sustainable place-making debates. With particular reference to two spatial scales of analysis and action, the small town of Stroud, England and the city of Cardiff, Wales, we explore the twin processes of disconnection and connection between community sustainability activists and local state actors. We conclude that whilst there will always remain a need for community groups to protect the freedom which comes from acting independently, for community activists and policy-makers alike, there are nevertheless a series of mutual benefits to be had from co-production. However, in setting out these benefits we also emphasise the dual need for local government to play a much more nuanced, integrative and facilitatory role, in addition to, but separate from, its more traditional regulatory role.     

Blogging for Sustainability: The Intermediary Role of Personal Green Blogs in Promoting Sustainability

The rise of social media radically broadens the sources and platforms used for environmental communication. Especially personal green blogs are worthy of study as they are spaces of everyday cultural politics through which people make sense of sustainability issues, and because they entail a radical break from conventional media in terms of legitimacy, form, and content of environmental communication processes. This paper studies the representation of sustainability on personal green blogs, and the communication processes through which these representations are constructed. It does so through a qualitative study of Swedish-language blogs. We study three blogs in-depth: a living experiment blog on sustainable food practices; a lifestyle blog centered around green family life; and a blog about consuming green beauty products. The analysis shows that all three blogs translate the complex landscape of sustainability to individual everyday practices. Yet, what these sustainability practices entail differs considerably between the blogs, ranging from a-political and doable lifestyle choices to an onset to radical redefining of consumption. Also, the communication processes on the blogs differ in quality and quantity. The paper uses these insights to reflect on the debates about how environmental communication is shaped by blogging and social media practices.     

Between international donors and local faith communities: Intermediaries in humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon

This paper explores the crucial part that faith‐based organisations (FBOs) play in acting as intermediaries between international donors and local faith communities (LFCs) implementing humanitarian relief projects for Syrian refugees. Humanitarian responses to the mounting Syrian refugee crisis have coincided with greater collaboration between international donors and LFCs. This cooperation often is facilitated by a complex web of non‐state intermediaries at the international, national, and local level. This study probes the breadth of roles of these intermediaries, drawing on primary data from case studies of two Christian intermediaries supporting Christian LFCs as they deliver aid primarily to Muslim Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. The results of the study are connected to the wider literature on LFCs in humanitarian response, revealing how intermediaries address issues of accountability, capacity‐building, impartiality, neutrality, and professionalism. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for further research on intermediaries as key actors in the localisation of humanitarian assistance.     

Beer,beef, and boards: the role of intermediaries in payment for ecosystem services arrangements in northwestern Montana

Payments for ecosystem or ecological services (PES) are voluntary, often market-based approaches to protecting environmental values. In the rural United States, some landowners receive PES through government led conservation programs, but little is known about their involvement in market based arrangements. We analyzed three examples of market based PES arrangements in northwestern Montana: watershed restoration and craft brewing, niche meat production, and certified timber supplies. We find that intermediaries were working between buyers and sellers in each case to set conditions for transactions and undertake the mechanics of implementation. These findings align with existing conceptualizations of intermediaries as crucial links in PES arrangements, but also suggest that intermediaries for market based PES arrangements are not always facilitators or neutral nongovernmental actors; they may actually be from the private sector and drive the process by serving as buyers. This research contributes to stronger understanding of the possibilities for local market based conservation in the rural West.     

A dynamic simulation model to support reduction in illegal trade within legal wildlife markets

Sustainable wildlife trade is critical for biodiversity conservation, livelihoods, and food security. Regulatory frameworks are needed to secure these diverse benefits of sustainable wildlife trade. However, regulations limiting trade can backfire, sparking illegal trade if demand is not met by legal trade alone. Assessing how regulations affect wildlife market participants’ incentives is key to controlling illegal trade. Although much research has assessed how incentives at both the harvester and consumer ends of markets are affected by regulations, little has been done to understand the incentives of traders (i.e., intermediaries). We built a dynamic simulation model to support reduction in illegal wildlife trade within legal markets by focusing on incentives traders face to trade legal or illegal products. We used an Approximate Bayesian Computation approach to infer illegal trading dynamics and parameters that might be unknown (e.g., price of illegal products). We showcased the utility of the approach with a small-scale fishery case study in Chile, where we disentangled within-year dynamics of legal and illegal trading and found that the majority (∼77%) of traded fish is illegal. We utilized the model to assess the effect of policy interventions to improve the fishery's sustainability and explore the trade-offs between ecological, economic, and social goals. Scenario simulations showed that even significant increases (over 200%) in parameters proxying for policy interventions enabled only moderate improvements in ecological and social sustainability of the fishery at substantial economic cost. These results expose how unbalanced trader incentives are toward trading illegal over legal products in this fishery. Our model provides a novel tool for promoting sustainable wildlife trade in data-limited settings, which explicitly considers traders as critical players in wildlife markets. Sustainable wildlife trade requires incentivizing legal over illegal wildlife trade and consideration of the social, ecological, and economic impacts of interventions.